The lost hubs of Easter Island.
If you bought a home automation hub from Revolv, sorry, it’s about to be bricked. Google bought Nest, which in turn bought Revolv, and then decided to turn off the servers that make its gizmos work…
So we’re pouring all our energy into Works with Nest and are incredibly excited about what we’re making. Unfortunately, that means we can’t allocate resources to Revolv anymore and we have to shut down the service. As of May 15, 2016, your Revolv hub and app will no longer work.
Thank you for your support and believing in us.
Sucker.
Oops. I said that. They didn’t. Not exactly. But that thought probably passed through the mind of anyone who bought a Revolv hub. With justification.
From a high tech, living-in-dog-years point of view, there’s nothing wrong with what Google did. And yes, I know, Nest is owned by Alphabet, which is now the new name for the Company Formerly Known As Google. And from a high tech, living-in-dog-years point of view, there’s nothing wrong with that.
There’s just one problem.
Consumers don’t care. They give credit or blame to the brand they know, and don’t give a damn what the suits or the geeks say (full disclosure: I used to be both and I’m still a geek). They don’t obsess over light switches, doorbells or coffee pots. They just want the freaking things to work and leave them alone for ten or twenty years.
Shutting down the Revolv servers is a mistake, but by itself it won’t make much difference. If Google and other tech-driven companies keep pulling this same dumb move, though, consumers will shrug off their brands and, eventually, the whole home automation category.
Free advice to Google: don’t confuse a light switch with Orkut.